We Are a Movement of Movements by Rivera Sun

I feel like shaking everyone and saying, don’t you get it? We don’t need a Movement of Movements – we are a movement of movements.

My friends, we have been trapped in old dominant paradigm thinking. We have been steeped in warmongering, hierarchical, competitive, control-based mindsets since birth. We think we are lacking something, or that we’re ineffectual at organizing, or we’re failing. We call for a Movement of Movements, like the War to End All Wars, a rallying cry that will amass the allies on the edge of the battlefield so we can massacre our enemies.

It makes me want to laugh – and cry.

We want to name, label, categorize, and control the emergent phenomenon of this revolutionary resistance. We want to take the wild flurry of activity that is erupting on a thousand fronts and turn it into an army for change. We want to call it something because then we can control it. This is what our lineage of science and religion has taught us: if we give it a name, it is ours. If we trademark the Movement, we can capitalize on it. If we organize it all in one place, we can make it work to what we consider its highest potential.

We need to let go. We need to surrender to this very large phenomenon and join with it. We need to trust each other, the causes, and the organic, emergent nature of what is happening . . . this is revolutionary. This is a way of participation that is radical in our society.

The long history of invasion, conquest, genocide, wars of aggression, and abuse of people and the planet has indoctrinated us in false beliefs that we must organize everything in order to survive. But these old patterns of competition and control are a worldview perpetuated by the wealthy elite, who profit from such mentalities at our expense. To this end, they have abused the theories and philosophies of the Judeo-Christian God and Darwin, alike. They school us in fear-based, violent mindsets to ensure that we will never pose a serious threat to their dominance. If we do not emancipate our minds from their worldview, we will remain blind to the greatest strengths of our movements.

Building a Movement of Movements seems to be the logical, strongest, and wisest approach to breaking our opponents’ power, but our real strength may lie in our myriad movements. The empowered elite are fighting us on all fronts. We have them surrounded on all sides. Our plethora of issues distracts them, divides them, and weakens their centralized position. They sit in the fortress of wealth and power, staring wild-eyed into the living, breathing, diverse jungle of opposition. There is nothing they would like more than to see us assemble all of our strength in one place and march down the road to their fortress. Then they could destroy us in one swoop. So, from the balustrades of their socio-political system, they taunt us and mock us, calling us disorganized and inefficient.

We are not disorganized. We are organized differently.

“We are the ivy crawling up the buildings, the moss breaking down the bricks, and the dandelions shooting up in the sidewalks. We’re as vast as the planet and as microscopic as infectious disease. The Dandelion Insurrection isn’t a handful of radicals. It’s all of Life itself!” – from The Dandelion Insurrection

We must learn to look at the interconnections of our myriad causes and wage struggle through collaboration, not control. Our causes are not at odds with each other, nor do they need unification under one name or coordination from a central command. Instead, we need to collaborate strategically, using our diversity of issues as our strength. If we look at the overlapping issues of health, economy, jobs, peace, surveillance, education, energy, housing, environment, democracy, and so on, we will see that every movement is working to replace destructive, corrupt systems with constructive, life-supporting, sustainable alternatives. Our strength lies in our inherent unity, not in the label attached to it. Our only weakness is in our uncertainty . . . and the fact that we remain unaware of the power of our situation.

We can tap into the collective and coordinated strength of our many movements by learning to strategically collaborate with one another. A few key elements of such an approach are:

Celebrate other’s achievements; the success of one cause is the success of the whole.

Take time to analyze the interconnections of the movements. Search for untapped strengths and sources of support. Identify pivot points of change and opportunities for other movements to help sway a critical element of your own movement.

Talk with each other. Find out how your efforts overlap and look for opportunities for strategic collaboration.

Our movements are revolutionary; their manner of collaborative, horizontal organization is the most natural, organic system on Earth. We terrify the empowered elite because we reflect, in our very structure, the most powerful force on the planet: Life. In what they call our disorganization, we embody the natural systems that the patriarchal, Puritanical European colonizers have been trying to repress and control for thousands of years. Our movements are as frightening to them as a liberated woman, or the pagan religions of old Europe that succumbed to the first invasion of the mentality that now engulfs the empowered elite around the globe. We are organic and uncontrollable . . . and we are, ultimately, unstoppable.

Instead of codifying our movements under one name, we must learn to recognize who and what we are. We are a movement of movements, a great multiplicity of motion. We are a thousand points of light. We are Life, itself.

This essay was inspired by a group of women during a Women Weaving the World discussion. Many thanks to all of them for the deep reflections, but particularly to Kathe Schaaf who spoke of the movement of movements in an eye-opening way. Learn more about Women Weaving the World here.

That said, reviewing old strategies is essential and invaluable. I recently attended the Real Farming Conference in Oxford, a radical and empowering coalition of diverse activists, permaculturists, producers, organicists, agroecologists, visionaries and the like.

Two important lessons emerged from this memorable gathering worthy of note. The first is the absolutely vital principle of dynamic ALLIANCE ~ co-operation, building strong links and reclaiming common ground, both literally and figuratively. Defending the integrity of the living energies that sustain us ~ our best ideas are also vitally alive. Mycelial connections! Spiritual solidarity.

The second was brought up in one of the multiple and magisterial sessions across 2 intensive days, by one experienced participant ~ the critical importance of SHARING OUR MISTAKES!

As Einstein so famously suggested, repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results, is a good definition of insanity.

Have the humility to learn from previous error. Ultimately that is how all of humanity has ever learned anything, since the dawn of consciousness. That is the core basis of the scientific method, keep improving ~ and don’t be afraid to abandon what doesn’t actually work!

Listen to Vandana Shiva. War-mongering, patriarchalist, destructive, obsessional corporatism is totally obsolete, redundant and counter to life itself; it’s anti-planet and anti-Nature, a monstrous dinosaur about to collapse under the deadly weight of its own excessive gravity.

What do you do when a gigantic dinosaur or an entire superannuated species is about to keel over ~ stay clear! OK, we weren’t around when they were, but the principle still applies. So get wise and get off the old track, it leads nowhere. Whereas, wandering along that wonderful garden path ~ that’s the gate to paradise!

Quite right Rivera. It’s a bigger narrative than any one or group of us can frame. It’s an internal, cellular thing.

There is no more “away” to throw ridiculous stuff…there is nowhere else for us “to go” ~ this is it for us…or as that sometimes annoying but occasionally useful sat-nav voice eventually tells us: “you have arrived!”

Rivera, the way that the battle of Seattle stopped the WTO from undermining our sovereignty as a nation was comprised of leftists , right wingers , church groups , loggers , green groups etc… broad based coalitions. and they stopped the meeting .

The Golden Rule

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another ... the rest (of the Torah) is all commentary, now go study.” - Rabbi Hillel

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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